The mecha genre of anime and manga has proved an enormous influence on videogames, from Virtual-On to Metal Gear Solid...

Last week I was in New York to get a hands-on with EA's Godfather II game, which I'll cover later. While there, however, I used a few hours of free time to visit an art exhibition at the Japan Society, entitled Krazy: The Delirious World of Anime + Manga + Videogames. Running until June 14 it's a small but carefully put together snapshot of Japanese pop culture, introducing key figures, and providing simple but informative notes on major influences and stylistic landmarks.

But it's the videogame section I really enjoyed. Co-curated by Will Wright, it focuses on just three games, Pac-Man, Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda, but portrays them with genuine insight…

The wall text about Pac-Man, for example, mentions that for many players, the game represented their first interactions with a joystick; consequently creator Toru Iwatani, drew elements of the interface from everyday life, "such as playing tag or mowing the grass". This might be common knowledge but it's new to me and it's a neat insight into the concerns of the first game designers. Wright also writes about how this was the first game to use sound to heighten the emotional experience – the music speeds up when the ghosts approach, while conversely, the sound of eating dots is somehow deeply satisfying and calming. It's the sort of thing we take for granted these days, but in the late-seventies, every tiny step forward in audio visual implementation made a huge impact on the industry.

Wright's stuff on Super Mario World is great too. He writes about how the game is a perfect example of emergent design, whereby simple elements work together to create complexity. When Mario hits a box with his head a mushroom comes out, when he stomps a turtle it withdraws into its shell – these are predictable rules, but combined they produce complex systems. Again, this kind of interaction is now buried under years of design iteration, but it's all still there; the basic rules that Miyamoto put together are still governing the likes of Prince of Persia and Uncharted.

My favourite part though, is the analysis of Legend of Zelda, which Will Wright explains in grammatical terms. He sees the weapons as nouns and your movement and attack options as verbs. When you pick up the sword, then the boomerang, then the baton, your vocabulary increases, and allows you to go back and explore more possibilities in previous game areas. It's a really simple but fascinating attempt to project the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure onto videogame structure and quite a useful way of thinking about really fundamental game design. Also, the exhibition had playable demos of all three games, including a tabletop two-player Pac-Man.

The manga and anime sections were interesting too, especially for the insight they provided into the influences behind Japanese game design. There were original comic book panels by Hisashi Eguchi, the artist who effectively paved the way for the whole J-Pop phenomenon through effervescent works like Susume!! Pirates and Stop!! Hibari-kun!, and by mecha innovator Mamoru Nagano, who employed delicate curves and long lines to create incredibly graceful mech models, influencing a whole generation of mech combat games. In the anime room, a curve of six giant screens showed each of the featured works, including essentials like Akira, Patlabor and Macross.

I've been to a couple of manga exhibitions in the UK, but nothing with such a heterogeneous approach to the whole culture. I wonder if I can convince them to send it all over to the Guardian's new exhibition space?